


the heart is hard to translate

by luxluminaire



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Missing Scene, Pining, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-30
Packaged: 2018-10-11 17:49:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10470630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luxluminaire/pseuds/luxluminaire
Summary: In the aftermath of discovering the heart of Hera's insecurities, Maxwell is determined to do everything she can to help her in her recovery. But as she comes to realize that she can no longer deny how much she cares about Hera, new discoveries come to light that make her question how far she is willing to go to keep her safe.(Maxwell and Hera, in moments, throughout the end of season three.)





	1. Chapter 1

“I don’t think I can do this, Dr. Maxwell.”

The nervous sound of Hera’s voice echoes through the space of the room, and it takes all of Maxwell’s willpower to not sigh in frustration in response to her words. In the wake of Hera’s recovery following her breakdown, she has to remind herself as much as she does the rest of the crew to be patient with Hera. The insecurities wired into Hera’s personality are not something that Maxwell can fix with a few tweaks to her code, and so she must proceed one baby step at a time to help Hera move past the self-doubt that has colored every moment of her performance on the Hephaestus.

“No, I don’t want to hear you say that,” Maxwell replies. “That’s what the voice in your head wants you to think, and that’s what we’re trying to block out. Whenever you find yourself thinking that you can’t do something, I want you to tell yourself that you _can_ do it and you _are_ good enough. Can you do that for me right now?”

“I really don’t see how that’s going to--”

“ _Please_ , Hera,” Maxwell implores. “The best way for you to get through this is by changing the way you think about yourself. And directly contradicting that command line is the first step.”

For someone who does not technically draw breath, Hera certainly does a good imitation of a deep inhale to prepare herself. “I _can_ do this,” she says in acquiescent response. “I _am_ good enough.”

“Good. That’s good.” There’s the first step taken care of, no matter how much she has had to prod Hera into taking it. “Now, I know this whole thing is weird and probably very difficult for you, but I need you to take your focus away from every function that you’re running right now. Just focus on this present moment, and nothing else.”

“But what if something goes wrong?” Hera asks. “My system is running thousands of processes at any given moment. What if not focusing on any of them takes something offline, or--or--”

“Everything will be fine,” Maxwell assures her. “I have the log of all your processes right here in front of me.” She taps the side of the computer terminal at her workstation. “If anything goes wrong, then we’ll stop right away and try something else. But we’re never going to know if this is going to work until we try, and so I need you to try for me. Okay?”

“Okay,” says Hera. She takes another imitation of a deep breath. “Taking my focus away from everything… now.”

She speaks as if she is executing a command line, even though the log in front of Maxwell shows no new commands or processes running after her words. What Maxwell _does_ see is a spike in the levels of Hera’s CPU and RAM usage, which is the closest thing to a physical representation of Hera’s emotional peaks that a computer can show. It’s probably the imitation of command line language that has caused the fluctuation, now that Hera is aware that every command she performs has the underlying thought of not being good enough embedded into it

“Good,” Maxwell encourages her. “Stay focused on my voice. Don’t pay attention to anything else. Let the sound of my voice be the thing that ties you to this moment.”

Maxwell keeps her own focus on the screen in front of her, watching the peaks and valleys on the chart of Hera’s resource usage steady themselves into a calm, undisturbed line. All of the processes that she is running remain unchanged, chugging along with all of their parameters in a nominal range. Maxwell lets out a quiet sigh of relief. Before starting this session with Hera, she has feared that teaching mindfulness and meditation to an AI would be nothing more than a fool’s errand, but perhaps there is some hope for this method after all.

It doesn’t take long before the steady line breaks into erratic jumps of resource usage once again, resembling a computer’s equivalent of a panicked heartbeat. Maxwell double-checks the list of Hera’s processes to ensure that nothing is shutting down or acting strangely. There’s a slight surge in the tech wing’s electrical system that makes the lights in the room that they occupy flicker slightly, but nothing else changes with Hera’s break from her state of calmness. For a first attempt, it actually hasn’t gone all that badly.

“Okay, you lost it,” Maxwell says. “But that was a really good start. Now you know that you can reach that state without anything going wrong.”

“But how is that going to _help_?” asks Hera. Her frustration and impatience sneak their way into her voice as she speaks. “Sure, I can try to focus on the present moment and nothing else. But I can’t keep my thoughts away forever. And then I start thinking about things like ‘What if someone needs me when I’m like this and I can’t help them?’ Or ‘What if this doesn’t work, and I’m just wasting your time?’ And then… just like that. It’s gone.”

“That’s the next step,” Maxwell explains. “Taking all of those thoughts and recognizing them, but then letting them pass you by. Not judging yourself for them or letting them change your focus. And then after you have that down, you’ll be able to use it to isolate your functions. To focus on your tasks one at a time and block out everything else. Including that one command line.”

A sound that closely resembles a sigh of exasperation comes out of the loudspeaker. “That sounds like it’s going to take an awfully long time.”

“It’s not going to happen overnight, no,” says Maxwell. “I know you’re used to quick fixes. Someone patches in a few upgrades, streamlines a few processes, and you’re ready to go. But this _will_ help you in the long run. I promise.”

She runs a hand along the side of the computer monitor in a motion resembling how someone would comfort another person with a touch to their arm or shoulder. Once Maxwell realizes what she is doing, she pulls her hand back. Where had _that_ come from? Hera may be as much of a person as any other member of the crew, but she occupies the station in an existence that is much different from any human body. Even though the computer in front of Maxwell is an extension of Hera and her functions, it is no more Hera’s body than any other part of the Hephaestus. And yet in this moment Maxwell has forgotten that Hera does not have a form that she can physically comfort--a strange error, considering how very aware she is of Hera’s limitations as an artificial intelligence at any other given moment.

If Hera has noticed anything about Maxwell’s actions, she does not question them. “Are you going to make me try again?” she asks instead.

“No. That’s enough for today.” There’s no use overwhelming her, especially when their work involves her getting used to something strange and new. “We’ll try again tomorrow. You’ve had a really good start, though,” Maxwell adds, not wanting to sound like she is giving up on her. “I know it’s not easy. But you _can_ do it.”

“Okay,” Hera says. The single word carries unmistakable determination, filling in the blanks of unspoken sentiment to tell Maxwell that she is not making a mistake in helping Hera get better.

Maxwell shuts down the programs that she has been running at her workstation and puts the computer into standby mode. She is halfway to the door when the continued sound of Hera’s voice stops her in her tracks.

“Maxwell?”

“Yeah?” she replies, turning to face Hera’s loudspeaker out of sheer habit. The way that Hera has dropped the “Doctor” from her name catches her attention. It’s far from the first time that Hera has been more casual in her address of her, but each instance of it intrigues Maxwell on a purely programming-related level. The professional protocol wired into Hera’s personality matrix forces her to call everyone by their proper titles when addressing them in conversation, and yet she has shown no difficulty in breaking that protocol from time to time. Maxwell has tried to track these shifts in address to discover if there is any pattern to them, but she has found no conclusive answers so far.

“Thank you.”

“No problem, Hera,” says Maxwell. She crosses the remaining distance to the door and opens it. “I’ll see you later.”

She leaves the tech wing and makes a path through the Hephaestus to return to the Urania. The Urania is only a fraction of the Hephaestus’s size, but it contains most of the same amenities, and the only things that Maxwell requires after a day of work are some food and a place to sleep. And Jacobi’s company, sometimes, because with all of the strange things that happen while in orbit around Wolf 359 she often needs the stability of Jacobi’s friendship to ground her. They have been through enough weird situations together by now, after all.

She finds him in the Urania’s lounge, poring over a set of schematics for yet another probe design as he makes his way through a mug of coffee. He looks up from his work with a nod of greeting to her when she enters before taking a long drink.

“You on break now?” he asks her.

“Yeah.” Maxwell heads over to the cupboard where various non-perishable food items are kept and takes out a nutrition bar--nothing substantial, but enough to hold her until she has time for a quick dinner later in the evening. “Technically since about an hour ago, but I got, uh… held up a bit.”

“You know, the Colonel was looking for you,” says Jacobi. He moves aside the paperwork that he has been looking at to focus his full attention on her. “Something about wanting you to get started on programming the computer for that module that we’re planning to send out for the survey in a few weeks. I convinced him that you were probably doing some very important work over on the Hephaestus and it can wait until later.”

“And was he convinced?” Maxwell asks. She unwraps the nutrition bar and takes a bite.

Jacobi shrugs. “He hasn’t been a pain in the ass about it since, so I’m assuming he was. Don’t be surprised if he asks you about what ‘important work’ you were doing next time you see him, though.”

Maxwell chews and then swallows, unsure of whether she should give Jacobi an answer to his indirect question. The issue of Hera’s continued functionality remains on everyone’s mind after her panic attack and subsequent shutdown, but Maxwell has mostly kept quiet about the work that she has begun with her. The Hephaestus crew will suspect her motives, still refusing to drop their suspicions about her despite everything that she has done for Hera, and Kepler will once again accuse her of letting her sentiments get in the way of her work. And Jacobi… Well, Maxwell knows his faith in Hera isn’t high, considering how cavalier he had been in his suggestion to replace her with a dummy program, but he also understands Maxwell’s dedication to her more than anyone else does. If anyone else should know about her new initiative, it would be him.

“I was doing a few things to help Hera,” she admits. “I know she’s been running everything more-or-less fine since what happened last week. And that’s really great, don’t get me wrong. But with her permission I’ve started trying out some things that will help her change the way she thinks about herself, and eventually how she runs her functions. All on a purely thought process level, of course. I’m not interested in trying to alter her programming or hardware.” A flash surfaces in her mind of what she had seen in Hera’s buried memories: the woman who sounded just like Hera inputting that self-sabotaging loop directly into Hera’s personality core. Witnessing that scene had filled Maxwell with a sick feeling of disgust that has made her vow to never allow herself to disregard Hera’s autonomy like that. “It’ll be a gradual process, but I think it’ll work. Eventually.”

Jacobi raises his eyebrows. “So you’re going to… what, play therapist to an AI? Does Kepler know about this little side project?”

“No,” Maxwell replies. She takes another bite of the nutrition bar. “And I’d prefer if he doesn’t find out. He was already suspicious enough of me getting too personally involved when I went into her memory banks. As far as he should know, any work I’m doing with Hera is directly related to getting the Hephaestus ready for the contact event and nothing more.” Which isn’t a complete lie, technically speaking. Because of how dangerous it is to lie to Kepler, she needs to have that sliver of truth in any misinformation that she sends his way. “And besides,” she continues on, “as long as there is a functioning AI on the station, Kepler doesn’t need to be concerned with what I’m doing with Hera.”

“Yeah, but that’s not what he’s going to say about it,” says Jacobi. “I get the feeling that until after the contact event, any major project that’s not sanctioned by him is a shitshow waiting to happen if he finds out.”

“Is this your way of telling me to be careful?” Maxwell asks.

Jacobi twirls his pen between his fingers in an absent motion that is much less impressive when the lack of gravity prevents any chance that the pen will fall. “Nah. I trust that you know what you’re doing. You’re the AI expert, after all.”

“Thanks for your vote of confidence,” says Maxwell.

She finishes the last few bites of the nutrition bar before crumpling the empty wrapper in her hand. She tosses it toward the recycling unit for inorganic materials, knowing full well that it will not reach its destination and instead run out of velocity, floating in the air a few feet short of the recycling units. With a sigh, she pushes off from her position so that she can properly dispose of it.

The door to the lounge opens, and Kepler enters the room. A slight frown crosses his expression as he takes in the scene in front of him, with Maxwell loitering at the recycling units while Jacobi scrambles to pretend that he has been hard at work before Kepler’s entrance.

“Maxwell,” Kepler says to her with no further greeting. “If you have time to goof off with Jacobi, you have time to work on the computer for the module. I want all of the basic functions ready to go so we can start fine-tuning the systems for the data collection that we need.”

“I’m, uh… I’m supposed to be on break right now,” Maxwell replies, even though she knows that debating technicalities with him is a futile effort. If Kepler wants something done, he wants it done _now_ , and break time means nothing when there is important work to take care of. “But I’ll get started on that right away, sir.”

“Good.” Kepler gives a decisive nod in response to her acquiescence. He then turns his attention to Jacobi. “And Jacobi, I want those schematics done and on my desk by 1800 hours tonight. 1800 _sharp_ ,” he emphasizes, because for all of the dedication that Jacobi puts into his work both Kepler and Maxwell have become very well-acquainted with his loose grasp on the concept of deadlines.

“Yes, sir,” Jacobi says with a sarcastic salute. When Kepler has his back turned, he follows up the gesture with an eye roll, although the rest of his face retains a certain amount of good-naturedness.

Maxwell follows Kepler through the door, relieved that for now she can continue to keep her secret of helping Hera from him, and then she gets to work.

 

* * *

 

Maxwell has never been big on birthdays, especially as she progresses through her twenties and each year becomes less of a milestone. When her big day arrives two weeks before the scheduled departure of the module, she expects very little fanfare from the crew. It’s not like she can expect a cake and balloons at her desk when a) the Urania’s stockroom is not exactly equipped for birthday celebrations and b) she does not even have a proper desk in the first place. At the most, she anticipates quick well-wishings from Jacobi and Kepler and nothing more, but she soon realizes that she has underestimated Hera’s attention to detail.

“Dr. Maxwell,” Hera says when Maxwell is on the Hephaestus doing some maintenance work in engineering. “If you don’t mind taking a break, I, um… I have something for you.”

“Something for me?” asks Maxwell, momentarily confused until she remembers what day it is. She tightens the valve on the pipe that she is working on one last time before setting her wrench aside.

“It’s your birthday today, isn’t it? April 13th. I have it in my files from interfacing with Colonel Kepler’s private server on the Urania. You’re twenty-eight now.”

“Yeah.” Maxwell tries not to resent Hera’s mention of her age too much. As each year passes by, she moves further away from “prodigy” and closer to “person who is just really good at her job.” As much as she knows that the distinction shouldn’t bother her, it still nags at the back of her mind. “I didn’t think birthday celebrations were really a thing around here. Especially when there’s so much work to do.”

“They’re not, usually,” says Hera. “I make sure to wish Officer Eiffel a happy birthday every year, because he has this thing about his birthday being on Christmas, but that’s it. But I figured… you and I are friends, right?” She hesitates slightly around the word “friends,” as if she is unsure of whether that is the right label to place upon their relationship. “And friends get each other gifts for birthdays.”

A surge of fond warmth passes through Maxwell at the sentiment, but she cannot ignore the feeling of longing that fills her as well. Being friends with Hera is all well and good, and Maxwell has certainly never expected to grow this close to the Hephaestus’s mother program. Over the months that they have known each other, however, her own feelings have come to border upon something deeper than friendship. It has been a gradual realization, and one that she does not dare speak aloud out of fear of the complications that it may cause, but it’s still _there_ , reminding her that she will do anything for Hera’s sake.

“So what did you get me?” Maxwell asks her.

“You’ll have to get on a computer so I can transfer the file from my servers,” replies Hera. “It’s not much, but I hope you like it.”

Maxwell pushes off from her position to reach the main computer in the section of engineering where she has been working. She logs into the computer to bring up the main interface. “Okay. Send it through.”

“Transferring the file now,” Hera confirms.

A message appears on the screen, telling Maxwell that a file has been received from Hera’s main server. The file extension identifies it as an image file, which sparks Maxwell’s curiosity. Of all the things that she would have expected Hera to send her, a picture is far from the top of her list. The file name gives no indication of its contents, and so her heart races with suspense when she clicks on the newly received file to open it.

“Wow,” she gasps after the file has finished loading. “Is this…?”

It’s the image of a beach, produced with a quality similar to a high-resolution photograph. The details reflect the perspective of someone who has heard about beaches but has never actually been to one, with the blue hue of the ocean too bright and the crests of the waves too perfect in their arcing shapes. Maxwell has dabbled in research about the capabilities of AIs to generate original images, but she has never before seen anything of this caliber.

“It’s what I saw when we were in the constructed mental space in my memory banks,” Hera explains. “Because even though it was hard for me to face all of that, I still liked having that space to be with you physically in a way that I can’t usually be. And maybe if it wasn’t so taxing on you to enter my memories, I’d want to go there with you again.”

A strange lump of sentimentality rises in Maxwell’s throat. “Thank you,” she manages to respond. “It’s… It’s wonderful. I didn’t think that that Sensus units were programmed to have artistic talent like this.”

“Well, it’s not artistic talent, exactly,” says Hera. “All I did was generate a composite image based on my memories of the mental space, cross-referenced with the textual descriptions of beaches that are in my database. But I’m glad you like it.”

Maxwell cannot ignore the relief in Hera’s voice. “Wait, Hera, were you _nervous_ to give this to me?”

“No.” Hera’s response comes out a little too hasty to be believable. “Well, maybe. It’s just that I’m not used to giving birthday gifts to people. I mean, I guess technically I’ve given something to Officer Eiffel before, but that was a radio transmission that I happened to find. It was more of a lucky coincidence than anything else. And I knew that he’d like it. I wasn’t sure if you’d…”

She trails off there. The AI developer in Maxwell wants to further investigate Hera’s nervousness about gift-giving, since she has never before encountered an AI who formally gives gifts and expresses concern about whether the recipient will enjoy them. There are some things that she cannot quantify, however, nor can she assign an objective value to Hera’s clearly fond feelings for her. The line of professional distance between researcher and subject, doctor and patient, has been blurred many times by now, and it leaves Maxwell wondering if her affection toward Hera will eventually become too much of a hindrance for her to work effectively.

“I love it,” she assures Hera. “And thank you. I’m going to send it to my tablet the next chance I get.” Her first thought is to print out the image and hang it up in her quarters, but none of the printers on the Hephaestus are of a high enough quality to effectively reproduce the depth of color that makes the image so unique. It will make a perfect background image for her tablet, however, as an eternal reminder to her of those hours she spent in Hera’s memory banks.

“You’re welcome,” Hera replies in the model of the politeness that is so deeply ingrained into her programming.

Before logging off from the computer, Maxwell ensures that the image is accessible from the Hephaestus’s internal network and password-protected so that only she can open it. More work remains for her to do on the pipes that she’d been tending to prior to Hera’s interruption, and so she returns to the maintenance checks that she has been doing on them. Hera does not say anything further to her, no doubt not wanting to further distract her from her work.

“Hera,” Maxwell says, a sudden thought coming to her as she tightens another valve on one of the pipes. “When’s your birthday?” She could easily find the answer to this question on her own by checking Hera’s system files for her activation date, but she would rather have Hera tell her herself.

“Oh!” A note of genuine surprise enters Hera’s voice. “Uh, sorry. It’s just that… Nobody’s asked me that before.”

“Really?” Maxwell moves on to the next valve and confirms that it does not need any adjustments. “Not even Eiffel?”

“No,” replies Hera. “Officer Eiffel is great, but honestly, I don’t know if he’d think to ask me about something like that. As much as he tends to forget that I’m a machine sometimes, I’m not sure whether he’d really think about me having a birthday.”

Technically Maxwell shouldn’t be thinking about it either. After devoting the majority of her adult life to AI development, in theory she knows that asking an AI about its birthday is as foolish as making inquiries about a toaster’s birthday. AIs may be sophisticated pieces of hardware that are capable of independent complex thoughts and problem-solving abilities, but that does not stop them from being machines. A machine should not assign any value or sentimentality to the day of its creation, and yet Maxwell suspects that Hera has spent enough time around humans to understand the significance of birthdays and apply it to herself.

“So?” she prompts her. “When is it?”

“The date of my initial activation was January 31st, 2012. A lot of my capabilities hadn’t been fine-tuned by that point, but that was the first time that I existed as a self-aware AI that was able to respond to outside stimuli.”

“It’s already passed, then,” Maxwell muses, more to herself than to Hera. She tries to remember what she’d been doing on that day two and a half months ago. Nothing noteworthy, as far as she can recall, as it had fallen sometime during the uneventful two weeks in between her near-death experience in engineering and the last incident of alien contact. If only she had been able to make that day special for Hera, even if only via a small gesture like the gift that Hera has given her today.

“It’s okay,” says Hera. “I wouldn’t have expected anything from you anyway. And besides, you’ve already done so much for me. I think all of that is more important than any gift you could have given me.”

“Thanks, Hera. That’s--” Maxwell hesitates, mentally assembling how to fully express her gratitude. She has seen many instances of how her work with individual AI units has led to an improvement in their performance, but she has never before felt such a personal degree of investment in wanting to help a unit overcome the problems that they face. It’s the blurring of that line of professionalism again, and it makes Maxwell’s growing fondness for her alarmingly clear. “It means a lot that you think that.”

She finishes tightening the last valve on the pipes that she has been working on. With the last of her maintenance tasks for the day crossed off her list, she now turns to the next item on the day’s agenda, which is another round of programming work on the module’s computer. The module is not scheduled to deploy for another two weeks, but Kepler is a stickler for getting everything done well ahead of schedule. In many regards Maxwell finds programming more relaxing than maintenance work, but it also requires more of her undivided attention and leaves less time for her to chat with Hera.

“So what other plans do you have for your birthday?” Hera asks her. “Other than working, that is.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t have much time for other plans today,” replies Maxwell. She returns the tools that she has been using to the nearby toolbox and checks her workspace to ensure that she has not left anything else behind. “This will probably be it when it comes to any kind of celebration. Back on Earth, Jacobi was a big fan of trick candles--you know, those ones where the flame pops right back up after you blow them out. But he can’t exactly stick some of those on a birthday cake for me here in space when even regular candles would light all of the oxygen in the room on fire.”

“Definitely not a good idea,” Hera agrees. “I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve had to warn Officer Eiffel about fire safety in the time that I’ve known him. I’d hate to have Mr. Jacobi cause an incident as well.”

Maxwell laughs. “Oh, don’t worry. Jacobi’s very particular about safety. He somehow manages to blow things up _and_ adhere to safety protocols at the same time. It’s quite impressive.”

The brief sound of laughter echoes from the loudspeaker as well. “Well, I hope you still have a good birthday even if you don’t get your cake with trick candles on it,” says Hera. “Maybe when you’re not so busy we can talk some more?”

“Yeah,” Maxwell replies. “Of course. And thank you for everything. I’ll definitely remember this birthday for a long time.”

She returns the toolbox to the supply closet before heading back to the Urania to continue her work. It is not until later that evening when she has retired to her quarters that she finally has time to pull up Hera’s gift to her on her tablet. She sets the picture as its background image, letting the rich colors fill the space of the screen. As the familiar warm feelings of sentimentality rise within her, she can no longer deny the extent to which her affection for Hera has grown. She will have to do something about that eventually, but for now, she lets those emotions flourish, filling the space of her quarters with bubbly joy that only heightens with the fond memories that Hera’s gift elicits within her.

 

* * *

 

For an operation that Kepler is determined to be carried out by-the-book, the four-day survey mission to the other side of Wolf 359 takes a turn for the worse when an alien doppelganger version of Jacobi shows up less than an hour into the mission. Even after Maxwell has safely returned to the Hephaestus and can finally get some rest after sleeping only a few hours at a time while in the module, she cannot close her eyes without hearing Jacobi’s screams as the solar storm tears him apart. As much as she wants to believe that the person outside of the module had not been the Jacobi that she has known for the past three years, a waver of doubt continues to plague her. It shouldn’t bother her--she has witnessed plenty of terrible things during her work with Goddard Futuristics, and she has even _done_ terrible things depending on what one’s personal metric for “terrible” is--but she cannot shake the feeling that no matter who or what he may have been, the Jacobi that had been left to die outside the module was still undeniably a _person_. No matter how she tries to spin it, nothing changes that she has had to listen to the death of someone who very much sounds like her best friend.

The morning after the module’s return, Maxwell gets right back to work on the lengthy to-do list of everything that Kepler wants her to get done before the contact event in less than two weeks. Between her lack of sleep and lingering troubled feelings, writing code and making programming adjustments remains a daunting task for her to remain focused on. Not even working on the Hephaestus where she has Hera for company and assistance helps her productivity.

“Are you okay, Dr. Maxwell?” Hera asks her. “This is the fifth time in the past seven minutes that you’ve had to go back and fix a typo that you haven’t immediately noticed. Plus your productivity rate is down twenty percent compared to your average speed.”

“I’m fine,” Maxwell insists. “I’m just tired. It’ll probably take a day or two to get my sleep schedule back on track.” She types a couple of more lines of code for the latest program that she is writing for Kepler. When she accidentally transposes a couple of letters, this time she notices her error almost immediately. “Goddamnit,” she mutters to herself.

“Officer Eiffel told me about all of the more, ah… _grisly_ details about what happened during the survey that weren’t covered in the briefing,” says Hera. “I don’t think anyone would blame you for being a little shaken up. But Colonel Kepler seems very confident that a thorough physical and psychological evaluation of Mr. Jacobi will prove that he’s the same man that was originally inside the module. I’m sure you have nothing to worry about.”

“I’m not worried about that.” The lines of code on the screen in front of Maxwell blur together as her focus slips away from her yet again. “It’s just that the more I think about it, the more I realize that whatever that Jacobi outside the module was, whether he was the original Jacobi or--or, I don’t know, some kind of alien trick, he was still _real_. In a way that I don’t think the others realize.”

“How do you know?” asks Hera.

Maxwell hesitates, unsure of how exactly to put her thoughts on the matter into words. “Actually,” she says, “you’ll probably be able to understand it better than anyone else. Because it was something that you told me that got me thinking. And I think what it all comes down to is memory.”

“Memory?” Hera echoes her.

“Yeah. Remember what you said when I went into your memory banks, about how you’d rather be deleted then have parts of your memory erased, and then we talked about how your memories shape you and define who you are?” Maxwell takes her hands away from the keyboard and allows herself to float freely away from her workstation. Keeping focused on her work has already proven itself to be difficult even without having a semi-serious conversation with Hera, and so she might as well use this time to take a break. It won’t kill Kepler to have to wait a few extra minutes for her to finish the program that she’s working on.

“The Jacobi inside the module and the Jacobi outside the module had the same memories when I questioned them separately about things from our history,” she continues on. “And if it’s true that our memories and experiences make us who we are, then both Jacobis were equally real in that sense. It shouldn’t be a question about whether we let the real Jacobi die, or whether we brought a fake Jacobi back to the Hephaestus with us. _They_ definitely both considered themselves real, and that’s what matters. If that makes any sense to you at all.”

“No, it… It makes a lot of sense, actually,” says Hera. “And I can understand why the others wouldn’t think of it that way. They’re probably only interested in a quantifiable answer about whether he’s the original Jacobi. Something that’s a definite yes or no.”

“And the only thing that’s definite here is that there’s something very, _very_ weird going on with the star.” The survey mission has gathered an acceptable amount of data according to Kepler’s high standards, but none of it comes close to explaining why that second Jacobi had appeared. As much as Kepler plays dumb about everything involving the possibility of alien doppelgangers, Maxwell cannot shake the feeling that perhaps he _knew_ that something involving them was going to happen during the module’s survey period. “Anyway,” she presses on, “I’ll be fine. I just need a little bit of time to distance myself from what happened.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Hera asks.

Maxwell shakes her head. “No. But thank you.”

She returns her attention to the computer and finds the place where she has left off in the code. She has barely started on the next line before Hera’s voice cuts through the air again.

“It’s good to have you back, though,” she says. “It was so quiet around here with half the crew gone. You’d think I’d have gotten used to quiet when Officer Eiffel was lost in space for six months. But it was still so weird. And I… I missed you. A lot.”

The familiar feeling of fond warmth floods through Maxwell at Hera’s last hesitant words.“I missed you too,” she admits. She wants to say more, to turn the complexities of her emotions into a more specific manifestation of how she feels, but the words will not come. Instead, she continues typing, not wanting to fall any further behind on her work. “I hope the Colonel didn’t give you too much of a hard time about anything while I was gone. His patience tends to get pretty much non-existent the closer a deadline gets.”

“No, he was mostly okay.” Hera hesitates around the word “mostly.” “He didn’t have any outright complaints about my performance, at least. So that’s good.”

“Did you have a chance to practice any of the things we’ve been working on?” Maxwell asks. With fewer people on board the station with the module’s departure, she had encouraged Hera to independently try out some of the techniques that she has been teaching her. She’d hoped that Hera would have fewer additional requests and tasks to pull her away from her meditation would help improve her focus.

“A little bit,” replies Hera. “It’s hard without you to guide me, but I think I’m getting better at it. Except for when I accidentally crashed the nav computer when I lost my focus. Twice. Lieutenant Minkowski wasn’t too happy about that.”

Maxwell tries to hold back her sigh of frustration. Although Hera has shown tremendous strides over the past three weeks, the occasional electrical surges and minor system failures that occur when she unexpectedly snaps out of her meditation remain an obstacle for her to overcome. Maxwell cannot expect perfection from her, because for better or for worse Hera’s capability for errors and mistakes are what make her more than just a machine, but with so many things at stake she wishes that Hera’s recovery could happen faster. However strong her feelings of impatience are, she suspects that Hera’s own feelings are a thousand times stronger.

“It’s progress, at least,” says Maxwell, trying to reassure herself along with Hera.

“Yeah.” A sound that resembles a weary breath comes out of the room’s speakers. “But if I’m not able to run everything properly again by the contact event, Colonel Kepler is going to--”

“Don’t think about that,” Maxwell tells her. “If the Colonel has any issues with your performance, he’ll come to me first, and I’m definitely not interested in having him shut you down. We still have over a week left until the contact event anyway. You shouldn’t let a few mistakes shake your confidence. You’ve come such a long way.”

“Yeah. I know. It’s just...”

Hera’s response carries a note of unmistakable uncertainty. The initial admission of her failures seems to have awakened her feelings of inadequacy that Maxwell now knows lurk directly below the surface of her programming. Even though the discussion of these feelings is an essential part of Hera learning to rise above her insecurities, a glimmer of regret nags at Maxwell for having broached the subject.

“Hera.” Once again, Maxwell wishes that she had an effective way to physically comfort her. If Hera had a human form, she would have touched her shoulder or maybe even grasped her hand, but instead she must settle for her words doing all of the work. “Just remember: You _can_ do this. You _are_ good enough.”

Hera makes a sound that resembles a calming exhale. “I _can_ do this,” she repeats. “I _am_ good enough.”

“Good,” says Maxwell. “We’ll have a proper session in a few hours once I have a little more free time. But right now, I should probably get back to work. Kepler’s going to be on my ass for the rest of the day otherwise.”

“Okay.” A moment of hesitation passes between them before Hera adds, “And you should remember that too, Maxwell. That you can do this, and that you’ll move past what happened in the module and things will be better. I know you can.”

Maxwell wants to say that it’s not that simple, but nothing about either of their situations right now is simple. Hera’s words of encouragement hearten her nonetheless, making her chest tighten with that strange combination of joy and longing. “Thank you,” she says. “We’ll talk later, okay?”

Hera gives an affirmative response, and then her voice fades away to be replaced with nothing but silence and the sound of Maxwell’s fingers against the computer’s keyboard. Maxwell takes a deep breath to direct her focus toward her work, but that does not stop the memories from the past few days from drifting into her mind--and below that, silently lurking, she cannot ignore the feeling that perhaps Hera has crossed the line into caring too deeply for her as well.


	2. Chapter 2

Any hope that Maxwell has of eventually returning to a somewhat normal schedule falls apart as the contact event draws nearer. The neverending pile of prep work has thus far brought her three all-nighters, one accidental nap at her workstation, and too many cups of coffee to count. It’s times like these when she envies Hera’s lack of a need to sleep. If she had the opportunity, Maxwell would easily trade her flesh-and-blood body for a mechanical one that can run indefinitely with no need for any rest beyond an occasional low-power cycle. For now, however, she has to resign herself to her fate of having too much work to do with not enough hours remaining to complete it.

“Are you busy?” she asks Jacobi one afternoon when she finally has some time to breathe. After an eventful morning of installing exterior receptors outside the station, which included narrowly avoiding getting nailed by a loose piece of paneling, she intends to savor every free moment that she has. With less than forty-eight hours remaining until the contact event, this may very well be her last chance to rest until after the event passes. “I was thinking of heading over to the Hephaestus to get something to eat. I could use some company.”

“Yeah, I guess I can spare a little bit of time,” he replies. “As long as you don’t mind waiting a couple of minutes. I promised Kepler I’d check the surveillance cameras that we put up in that hidden room in engineering. He’s been on my case about not keeping up with monitoring duties.” The tired sarcasm in his voice with his last words indicates just how unenthused he is in following that order.

“Wait, we’re still supposed to be checking those?” Maxwell inquires. She follows Jacobi down the corridor. “I haven’t had that on my schedule for months now.”

“Well, it’s not like he can put ‘check surveillance cameras’ on the rotation list that goes out to every crew member.” Jacobi pushes open the door to the surveillance room, a small space where a computer monitor broadcasts the feeds from the surveillance cameras that had been covertly installed during the repairs to the Hephaestus. “That would definitely raise some questions from the Hephaestus guys.”

“But when we installed the cameras we didn’t find any evidence that the crew knows about that room,” says Maxwell. “There wasn’t even any indication that the door had ever been _opened_ before we went in. If the Colonel thinks that they’re up to something in there, it would have to be a _very_ new development.”

“Yeah, that’s what I told him. With the proper amount of ‘all due respect, sir’ and all that.” Jacobi inputs a few keystrokes to bring up the camera feed from the offending room on the Hephaestus. “But he seemed pretty insistent. It makes me wonder if…” He trails off, frowning at the screen as he makes a couple of adjustments to the feed.

“What?” Maxwell prompts him.

“Holy shit,” Jacobi gasps. “Come look at this.”

Maxwell moves closer to him to look over his shoulder at the zoomed-in image on the computer screen. At first, she is unsure of what she is supposed to be looking at, but then she sees it: the irrefutable evidence that at least one person on the Hephaestus knows about this room.

“Is that--” She cannot bring herself to finish her inquiry, not wanting to think too deeply about the implications of what she is seeing.

“Yep. Someone’s been making themselves a nice batch of homemade napalm. They’re definitely aiming to cause some serious damage.”

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” Maxwell murmurs. She stares transfixed at the stockpiled napalm. She’s no expert in incendiary materials, but the amount that has been gathered is certainly enough to cause widespread death and destruction--like easily taking out three SI-5 members. “Which of them do you think are behind this?”

“Well, Eiffel may be a criminal, but this doesn’t really seem up his alley. He’s more about looking for solutions that _don’t_ get people killed.” Jacobi puts down one of the five fingers that he holds up. “Minkowski has never been a fan of Kepler’s leadership, but she’s strictly by-the-book. I don’t think she has it in her to cook up something like this.” He puts down another finger. “Which leaves…”

“Probably not Hera,” says Maxwell. Or at least she _wants_ to believe that Hera is not involved in whatever plan is in play here. After everything that Maxwell has done for her, she has surely garnered enough trust for Hera to refuse to act against her. “The room is outside of her sense horizon. She should be completely unaware of anything going on in there.”

Jacobi makes a noise of skepticism. “I wouldn’t necessarily count on that. Just because she can’t see what’s happening in the room doesn’t mean she’s not in on it. And considering it wouldn’t be the first time she’s tried to kill somebody--”

“That was different,” Maxwell insists. “Hilbert had forcibly ripped out her personality core. It was an extreme violation. I think anyone would have done something like that after having to be around a person who did something unforgivable to them. Besides, she knows that Kepler won’t hesitate to order her deletion if anything goes wrong. I don’t think she’d willingly go along with anything that would hurt us.”

“Hurt _us_?” asks Jacobi. “Or hurt _you_?”

“I--” Maxwell breaks off there, not wanting to accidentally reveal the full extent to which she cares about Hera. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

Jacobi hesitates before responding. “Look, I wasn’t sure whether to bring it up,” he says, speaking each word with caution as if he is verbally walking on eggshells. “But I’m not exactly blind. I’ve seen how much you care about her. Hell, you stayed up for thirty-seven hours straight with zero breaks to make sure she got back online. You can’t tell me that you haven’t at least a little bit fallen in lo--”

“Daniel.” Jacobi’s name is tight in Maxwell’s throat. “Please. I can’t--I can’t talk about this right now.” Not when the situation with the Hephaestus crew has become much more complicated, and especially not when the true nature of her feelings makes the current circumstances much more dangerous for both her and Hera.

At first, there is only silence between them. Jacobi’s eyes remain fixed on her, filled with questions and curiosity. When he opens his mouth to speak, she fears that her words have not done enough to convince him that she wants the subject dropped, but whatever objection he is about to say dies away with nothing but a slight frown left in its wake.

“Yeah, okay,” he finally replies. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” says Maxwell, even though part of her is screaming that things are not in fact fine. “Anyway, I’ve worked with Hera for long enough that I know when she’s hiding something from me. And I don’t think she’s part of whatever’s going on here.”

With a sigh of reluctance, Jacobi puts down a third finger. “So that leaves Lovelace and Hilbert.” He wiggles his two remaining fingers. “Hard to imagine those two working together, but they _are_ both the type who would go for something extreme like this. And they’re the two people who have been on the station the longest. They’d know the layout well enough to be able to find a hidden room to store any incriminating evidence.”

“Can you access the older surveillance footage?” Maxwell asks. “Maybe see who’s been using the room and how long ago this started?” She’s not sure whether she wants to find out the answer, especially if it implicates Hera’s involvement, but when it comes to inevitably informing Kepler about what they have found, he will want nothing less than definitive answers.

“Yeah, hang on.”

Jacobi fiddles with the playback controls for the cameras. The image on the screen rewinds in a reversed, lightning-fast time-lapse of the scene that it displays. When two figures eventually appear on the screen at a timestamp of approximately thirty-one hours ago, he stops the rewind and lets the surveillance footage proceed forward at a normal speed. The sight of Lovelace and Hilbert in the camera’s frame does not surprise Maxwell in the slightest, but the real mystery is whether the audio from the footage will reveal any more answers.

“That’s got to be close to enough by now,” Lovelace is saying. “We don’t have much time left. We have to move on to phase two soon.”

“No,” Hilbert replies. “We are working with very volatile substance here. Very dangerous. Is better to have more than we need in case anything goes wrong. But I will make sure to speak to Officer Eiffel about the device when I have the chance.”

“And you’re sure he’ll agree to help you?” asks Lovelace. “You haven’t exactly been a shining example of trust for him.”

“It is Eiffel.” Even from the distant view that the camera presents, Maxwell sees the scowl that comes across Hilbert’s face. “We can never be sure how he will react. But if all goes as planned, we _will_ be able to persuade both him and Minkowski to join us.”

“Let’s hope you’re right,” Lovelace says. “I’m getting tired of waiting.”

They depart from the room, disappearing from the view of the camera and leaving nothing behind but the damning evidence of the stockpiled napalm. At the sound of the door closing behind them, Jacobi stops the recording and rewinds it twenty seconds back. Hilbert’s words of “If all goes as planned, we _will_ be able to persuade both him and Minkowski to join us” repeat themselves before he stops the recording again. A frown crosses his lips as he rubs his chin thoughtfully.

“Well, at least we were right about Lovelace and Hilbert being the ones behind this,” he says. “But if they’re trying to get the other two involved too… Shit. This could be bad.”

“They didn’t say anything about Hera, though,” Maxwell notes, trying to keep a tone of offhandedness in her observation. She is unsure whether she should feel vindicated by this detail or wary that Hera may still have an unspoken involvement in the plan.

“Mm. That’s true. But I don’t think we can completely discount anything about her involvement yet. If they’re planning something big, they’re going to need the help of an omnipresent AI. There’s no way around that.”

As much as Maxwell wants to believe otherwise, she cannot deny the truth in Jacobi’s words. Ignoring the anxious feelings that squeeze at her heart at the thought of Hera being involved in a plot against her, she instead turns her thoughts to more pressing matters. The Hephaestus crew have now lost their element of surprise, and so now she, Jacobi, and Kepler must formulate a plan to outsmart the threat against them. It’s a good thing that almost every job that Maxwell has done with the SI-5 team has involved getting herself out of tight spots in one way or another.

“So what now?” she asks. “I guess we’re going to have to tell the Colonel, huh?”

“Yeah, he definitely needs to know about this.” Jacobi rewinds the recording again, this time letting it go back to the moment that they had first seen Lovelace and Hilbert enter the room. “Either we tell him now and have to listen to his lecture about how we should have been keeping a closer watch on those surveillance cams, but we also give him a head start in figuring out what to do about them. Or we don’t tell him and avoid the lecture, but then we have to deal with the fallout of him being completely blindsided when they launch whatever plan they have. I’m personally more of a fan of option one.”

“Yeah, me too.” Maxwell takes a breath to brace herself against the very real possibility of having to hear one of Kepler’s lectures. Even to his own crew Kepler can be downright terrifying when he wants to be, but given the choice between chastisement and death Maxwell would much rather take her chances with chastisement.

Jacobi pushes off from his position to reach the switch for the room’s intercom. “Hey, Colonel,” he says. “You’re gonna want to come to the surveillance room. We’ve got a bit of a situation on our hands.”

Kepler does not respond over the intercom, but it is only a few moments before he appears in the surveillance room. He moves with purpose as he passes through the doorway and closes the door behind him in a crisp, decisive sound.

“What did you find?” he asks with no further preamble.

“So, uh... you know those cameras that we set up in that secret room in engineering?” Jacobi begins. “And at the time it didn’t look like the room was being used? Yeah, it’s... not so secret anymore. Look at this footage from a day and a half ago.”

Kepler approaches the screen of the surveillance feed and presses the play button. Maxwell observes him closely as he watches the brief snippet of conversation between Hilbert and Lovelace play out, and she gauges his reaction to determine the extent to which she must continue to brace herself. His face does not betray any signs of emotion--no disapproving frown or red-faced anger or wide-eyed alarm--and that worries Maxwell even more. Silent impassiveness from Kepler usually signifies that a situation has crossed over into the danger zone. She can only hope that she and Jacobi will not be caught in the crossfire.

After the sound of the a closed door indicates Lovelace and Hilbert’s departure on the video footage, an uncomfortable pause falls between everyone present as Kepler turns to face Maxwell and Jacobi. “And why,” he says, “are we only finding out about this now when it would have taken them several weeks to stockpile that much napalm?”

“In fairness,” replies Jacobi, “the first four months of checking the camera feed for that room didn’t show any evidence of it being used, so it really made sense to stop checking it and use that time for other--”

Kepler’s low growl of frustration cuts off his words. “How about you, Dr. Maxwell?” he asks. “Do you also have a sorry excuse for how this _staggering_ act of negligence happened?”

“No, sir,” she replies. “But I’m sure if there was anything we needed to know, Hera would have told us about it.”

“And are you _positive_ about that?” says Kepler. “You don’t think that you might have a blind spot when it comes to her?” He says the words “blind spot” with such particular emphasis that he may as well be repeating what Jacobi had pointed out the obvious affection between her and Hera.

“With respect, sir, it’s my job to work closely with Hera. I’ve been doing everything in my power to make sure that she’s running the station to the best of her abilities. I think that’s earned a certain amount of trust between me and her.”

A whisper of doubt now plagues the back of Maxwell’s mind, however. Can she really trust that Hera would warn her about a plot against the Urania’s crew if she was aware of it? Hera is part of the Hephaestus’s crew, after all, and for all of the cooperation between the two crews the people on the Hephaestus have not done a good job of concealing their distrust for Maxwell, Jacobi, and Kepler. But surely Hera would never entertain the idea of acting against her, not after everything that Maxwell has done for her. She _wouldn’t_.

At first, Kepler does not say anything in response to her. The corner of his mouth twitches, as if he wishes to say something else on that matter, but the words do not come. What he _does_ say is a decisive reply of “We’ll discuss this later, Maxwell. But for now, I need you-- _both_ of you--to know that we are on the brink of one of the most important discoveries of alien life that humanity has ever seen, and so you need to _do your goddamn jobs_ to make sure that nothing gets in the way of that. Am I clear?”

“Yes, sir,” says Maxwell, accompanied by Jacobi’s response half a second ahead of her.

“Good.”

Behind Kepler, the archived footage of the surveillance feed continues to play. The unoccupied room remains unchanging in the absence of any activity inside of it, but the visible pile of napalm taunts Maxwell. The end result that Lovelace and Hilbert hope to achieve is clear, but everything else leading to the napalm’s inevitable deployment remains an unknown variable. As much as Maxwell enjoys solving the value of unknown variables, this is one equation for which she does not want to know the solution.

“So what’s the plan?” asks Jacobi. “Should we take them out now, you think?”

“No,” replies Kepler, and the staunch refusal in his response surprises Maxwell. “They need to think that they’re still in control of the situation. We’re going to let them think they’re going to win with this plan of theirs, only to cut them off at every turn. If they think they can play against us, we’re going to give them a goddamn game.” His mouth turns upward into a grin that extends to the manic gleam in his eyes.

“What do you need us to do?” Maxwell asks, unsure of whether she wants to know the answer. In the years that she has spent under Kepler’s command, she has had very few qualms about the nature of the work that is required of her as a member of the SI-5. Despite all of the vaguely fond memories she made while spending time with the Hephaestus crew, she recognizes most of them as the disposable assets that they are supposed to be. And yet it is the person who theoretically should be the most disposable, the one that should be dismissed as just a machine, who gives her the most pause when it comes to her doing what must be done. As long as she can carry out her duties while still keeping Hera safe--but a gnawing suspicion in the pit of her stomach tells her that will be impossible if Kepler has anything to say about it.

“I want someone’s eyes on these surveillance cameras 24/7,” says Kepler. “The moment they plan on using that napalm, we need to be ready for them. And it’s going to be soon. The contact event’s definitely got them jumpy.”

He turns toward the surveillance monitor and inputs the necessary adjustments to return the feed to display live footage. The emptiness of the room apart from the looming presence of the stockpiled napalm reminds everyone that, at least for now, they still have time. The real question is how long it will be until that time runs out.

“Jacobi, you’ll take the first surveillance shift,” Kepler continues on. “Six hours. Bring whatever other work you can in here so that you don’t fall behind. Let me know the moment you see or hear anything new on that screen. Understood?”

Jacobi’s mouth twists in the verge of a protest, but in the end the only response he can manage is a compliant “Yes, sir.”

“And Maxwell...” Kepler pauses after saying her name, as if he is unsure of how to follow it up. Any uncertainty that he displays, however, is always so fleeting that within a few moments Maxwell doubts whether she has truly witnessed hesitation from him. “I’ll see you in my office. There are some things we need to discuss. _Privately_.”

Maxwell swallows hard against his decisive words. “Yes, sir,” she replies.

She lingers in the surveillance room after Kepler leaves, staving off the moment when she joins him in his office. Her focus remains on the door that has swung shut behind Kepler in his departure, and she keeps her back to Jacobi so that he does not see the worry in her expression.

“Sounds like you’re in trouble,” Jacobi says. “Getting told to come see Kepler after class and all. And here I was thinking he’d be more pissed at _me_ for not checking the surveillance cameras more often.”

Maxwell turns to face him, forcing as much confidence as she can into her response. “I’m sure I’m not in trouble. He probably just doesn’t want to distract you from your new assignment. Conversations about Hera can get pretty complicated, after all.”

It’s a weak line of reasoning, and they both know it. The creases of skepticism that line Jacobi’s forehead spell out his doubt clearly enough.

“You _do_ love her, though, don’t you,” he says. “Hera, I mean.”

The word “love” pierces Maxwell straight through to her core. As good as she has been in recognizing her feelings for Hera that have made themselves clear over these past several months, she has been careful to never assign the value of “love” to them. For her, love has always been something that is unknowable, untranslatable. Too many questions arise from calling her feelings “love”--whether she can love someone who, for all of her insistence that Hera is a person, is still very much a machine, or whether a word as serious as “love” applies when she is not entirely sure that Hera feels the same way about her. Even if the true nature of Maxwell’s emotions lies somewhere within that nebulous realm of love, she refuses to identify them as such.

“I shouldn’t keep the Colonel waiting,” is all she says. “Enjoy your surveillance shift.”

“Alana,” Jacobi calls after her, but by the time his voice reaches her, she is already gone.

 

* * *

 

Kepler’s “office” is actually the more formal name for his expansive quarters, half living space and half vague approximation of what his office at Goddard Futuristics headquarters had been. Despite the necessary alterations to interior design that must be made in a low-gravity environment, Kepler has managed to create a setup with an actual desk, which is bolted to the floor along with a few chairs. There’s something inescapably appropriate about having to strap yourself into one of the chairs upon being summoned to his office, and Maxwell certainly feels the need to brace herself both physically and mentally as she sits down in front of Kepler’s desk after entering the room.

“Care to join me in a drink?” he asks her once she has settled herself.

“Sure,” she replies, not that she has much choice in the matter. When Warren Kepler offers someone a drink, it usually means that he is about to ask for a favor, dispense critical information, or both, and it would be a criminal insult to refuse him.

Kepler pours out two glasses of whiskey, filling each of them with only the equivalent of a few swallows if they weren’t forced to drink every beverage through a straw. Maxwell accepts the glass from him with a murmur of thanks and drinks, letting the rich taste fill her mouth. Kepler’s prized bottle of scotch may have been tragically vented into space a couple of months previously, but that is far from the only alcohol that he keeps on the Urania. Whatever bottle has become his new favorite, she certainly cannot deny its quality.

“How are things going with Hera?” he asks her. “And be honest with me. She can’t hear you in here.”

“Everything’s fine. Great, even.” Maxwell cradles her glass of whiskey between her hands. “I did some work with her this morning, and she’s showing some real improvement in her ability to isolate her command functions. I think that will really help her avoid becoming overwhelmed during times of stress.” She is careful not to mention exactly what her sessions with Hera entail. It’s safer to let Kepler believe that she is merely making some minor programming adjustments, rather than assuming the role of an AI therapist.

Kepler makes a thoughtful noise and takes another drink from his glass. “And you’ve heard nothing from her about this plan that the rest of the Hephaestus crew has cooked up?”

“No, sir,” Maxwell replies. “I’m not sure whether she knows. Lovelace and Hilbert didn’t say anything about her in that surveillance footage that we found.”

“But if you asked her about it,” says Kepler, “she would give you an honest answer, wouldn’t she?”

Maxwell takes another drink to prepare herself for how she will answer him. His inquiry is simple on the surface, but below its basic meaning it hides a deceptive number of complexities. Not only does her answer reveal what she suspects about Hera and her motives, but it also exposes the degree of Maxwell’s own loyalty and attachment. If Jacobi has already figured out the extent to which she cares about Hera, Kepler’s own realization must not be far behind. And if Kepler gets even the slightest inkling of Maxwell becoming too invested in Hera… Well, they have already had that conversation once before. His words to her after Hera’s shutdown echo in her mind, reminding her not to get sentimental. He is right, of course. In all of her previous work with the SI-5, she has never let sentimentality toward her AI subjects stand in the way of what must be done. Hera, though… Hera is _different_ , and Kepler will never be able to understand that.

“I’m not sure,” is all she says to him in response.

“You _need_ to be sure.” Kepler’s hand tightens almost imperceptibly around his glass. “What was it that you said back in the surveillance room? That it’s your job to work closely with Hera? I think knowing whose side she’s on falls under that job description.”

“Yes, I know, but--”

“But _what_?” Kepler interrupts her. “There shouldn’t be anything complicated about this. You were chosen to work with us because you’re one of the best damn AI specialists that Goddard Futuristics has ever seen. You have a real, honest-to-God _gift_ when it comes to understanding artificial intelligence, and you’re willing to push things as far as they need to go in the name of the bigger picture. What I want to know is why you’re hesitating now.”

“It’s not hesitation,” she replies. “I _want_ to believe that Hera would tell me the moment she hears about a plot against us. Believe me, sir, I really do. But even after all of the work I’ve done with her, I still can’t always be sure of how she will act.”

Kepler takes a drink and surveys Maxwell with interest over the edge of his glass. She meets his gaze unblinkingly, refusing to back down from him. At first, she thinks that she has left him with no further questions, but then he opens his mouth to speak.

“Remind me,” he says. “What was the work you were doing on the last Sensus unit that you worked with one-on-one before coming up here?”

Of all the irrelevant questions to ask. Maxwell turns her glass idly in her hand as she mentally compiles everything about that assignment into something she can easily explain to Kepler. “Unit 178? I was running experiments on him to try to expand his capacities. The prevalent traits that were randomly generated into his personality matrix made him unfit for even the simplest of jobs. I was working on manipulating elements of his personality to test the theoretical possibility of him developing new skillsets that would make him a more useful unit. The idea was that maybe if I was able to change who he was, I could improve his performance.”

“Exactly,” says Kepler. “And you’re able to influence Hera more than anyone else on this station. If you’re constantly unsure of how she will act in a given situation, then it’s your job to _make sure_ that she will do what we want her to do. You have the power to change her, just like you tried to change Unit 178.”

The way that Kepler says “change” makes Maxwell’s blood run cold with the memories of everything that Hera has endured with people trying to change who she is to suit their own needs. “But those tests on Unit 178 _didn’t work_ ,” she retorts. She takes a deep breath to prevent herself from raising her voice any louder. “The stress of the experiments and having his personality altered left him extremely unstable and in even worse shape than when I started working on him. And I am _not_ going to risk the same thing happening to Hera.”

At first, Kepler meets her words with nothing but silence. The quiet moment between them seems to last an eternity before he responds.

“As I’ve told you before,” he says, “this is not the time for you to let your personal feelings get in the way of your work. You remember what I’ve said about things that are nice to have, but can easily be sacrificed for the sake of something bigger? This glass of whiskey, for example.” He holds up his glass, and the fluorescent light of the overhead lamp above his desk reflects off the glass’s surface. “Hera is something that is nice to have. I don’t think you’ll hear any of us complaining about having a highly advanced artificial intelligence to help us out.” He drinks from his glass. “But when it comes to a valuable asset like her, we need to make sure that she’s on our side if the rest of the Hephaestus crew is plotting against us. If you can’t guarantee that she isn’t in on their plan, then she loses her usefulness. And in that case, maybe we’re better off with that dummy program instead.”

Maxwell cannot believe that he is giving her this speech in the context of Hera. She and Jacobi have jokingly referred to conversations like these as “the whiskey speech,” laughing at the poor souls who have had to hear Kepler wax poetic about how he likes the feel of a glass of whiskey in his hand. Being on the receiving end of a whiskey speech, however, is significantly less amusing, especially when it contains threats against Hera’s continued existence. She also hears the echo of Dr. Pryce from Hera’s memories when Kepler says “valuable asset,” remembering how the voice that was so like and yet unlike Hera’s had hissed across the “s”es and hit the hard sound of the “t.” Maxwell will be damned if she allows Hera to undergo another traumatic experience after everything that Pryce has done to her.

“That’s not an option,” she declares. “I’m not going to delete her and replace her with something else. Something _worse_. She doesn’t deserve that.”

“She is a _machine_ , Alana.” The hard edge in Kepler’s voice counteracts his more personal use of her first name. His form of address is enough of a warning sign as it is. In the three years that Maxwell has worked for him, she has only been “Alana” to him in moments of dead seriousness. “It’s not about what she does and doesn’t deserve. And you shouldn’t delude yourself into thinking that. If you get even the slightest _whiff_ of her being part of what the Hephaestus crew is planning, you need to do whatever you have to do to keep her under our control. Otherwise, I _will_ have to give you the executive order to shut her down permanently. Do I make myself _absolutely_ clear?”

Maxwell wants to defy his ultimatum, telling him that she refuses to do anything that might hurt Hera. The words do not come, however. When she opens her mouth, the response that comes out is the obedient acquiescence of “Yes, sir.” She hates herself for it, just a little bit.

“Good.” Kepler finishes off his glass of whiskey. “Now get back to work. I want to run the final tests on all of the equipment tomorrow morning starting at 0900 sharp, and everything needs to be ready by then. No exceptions.”

“I’ll get right on it,” says Maxwell. She drinks the last few sips from her glass as well. The taste turns unpleasantly sour in her mouth as it goes down. “Thank you for the drink, Colonel.”

She rises from the chair and reaches across his desk to press the empty glass into his hand. Her gaze upon him remains steady before she turns to depart from the room, but once her back is to him the calm confidence in her expression slips away. Her heart twists in agony, and the only hope that she holds within her as she moves forward is a desperate plea that she will not have to make the choice that Kepler has forced upon her.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue from the last section of the chapter is adapted directly from "Desperate Times."

As the final twenty-four hours before the contact event draw near, Maxwell finds herself increasingly restless. Between the pressure to have everything go smoothly and the looming possibility that the Hephaestus crew may make a move against them before the event hits, her stress levels are approaching their maximum limit. The uncertainty is what is the worst for her: not knowing whether they will be ready for the contact event in time, not knowing what the event will bring, and not knowing whether she will be forced to subdue Hera. As good as Maxwell is at thinking on her feet, she needs a degree of certainty to reassure her that everything will proceed as planned with no major surprises.

After the whirlwind of the previous day’s events, Maxwell remains awake in her quarters a few hours after she should have gone to sleep. It’s not for a lack of _trying_ to sleep, of course. She has cycled through all of her mental sleep aids as she has lain awake--counting in prime numbers, doubling numbers until they grow too large for her to keep track of--but none of them have lulled her to sleep. Usually working with numbers comforts her, bringing her to a calmer state that allows her to drift off into slumber, but tonight they have betrayed her.

When she finally accepts that it is time for her to give up on sleeping, she crosses the small space of her quarters to reach her storage locker. She takes out the portable comms device that she had taken from the Hephaestus a few weeks earlier so that she can communicate with Hera while working on the Urania. Unlike with anyone else on either spacecraft, Maxwell does not have to worry about waking Hera when seeking company in the middle of the night, and so she switches on the comm to open the channel with Hera’s central processor.

“Hera?” she says. “Can you hear me?”

“Dr. Maxwell?” The surprised sound of Hera’s voice comes through the speaker, and the lower quality of the portable comm device makes her response sound tinny and far away. “Where are you? I don’t see you on any of my scans.”

“I’m in my quarters on the Urania,” she replies. “Remember when I opened a portable comms channel so I could get your input on some of the work I was doing over here? I still have that link set up.”

“Oh. Right.” Maybe Maxwell is imagining it, but in those two words she hears a trace of nervousness in Hera’s voice. “But it’s two in the morning. Shouldn’t you be--?”

“Asleep?” Maxwell finishes for her. “Yeah. I tried, but… There’s a lot for me to think about right now. So I figured I’d see what you’re up to.”

“Oh, well, I’m not really up to anything,” says Hera. “I mean, of course I’m doing _something._ I wouldn’t just be, you know, sitting here not running any of my functions. I’ve just started a debug cycle on the major engineering systems to, uh, make sure everything there is running ship-shape for the tests tomorrow morning, and…”

She trails off there. The hesitation in her speech reinforces Maxwell’s suspicion that Hera has something to be nervous about, as does the frequent glitches in her response. A few glitches here and there is normal for her, of course, but a noticeable increase usually indicates that she is facing some degree of emotional distress.

“Hera?” asks Maxwell. “Is anything wrong?”

“No, nothing’s wrong. Everything’s running fine, and so far the debug cycle hasn’t turned up any problems, so I think everything will be all set for the tests on the psi-wave regulator--”

“That’s not what I meant,” Maxwell interrupts her. “I meant whether everything’s okay with _you_.” She speaks her words with careful deliberateness, hoping that Hera will read between the lines and understand that Maxwell is not asking about her functions so much as she is asking about her emotions.

“I’m _fine_ , Dr. Maxwell,” Hera says. Maxwell raises her eyebrows at the the too-insistent emphasis on the word “fine.” Even though Hera cannot see her physical reaction, the skeptical silence that follows her words causes Hera to huff out a sound of frustration. “Really. I’m fine.”

“Okay. But you know that if there’s anything you want to talk about--anything on your mind, or anything that’s bothering you--you can always tell me, right?”

Maxwell tries not to make her words sound too pointed, because the last thing she wants to do is to force anything out of Hera. She instead aims to speak from a place of friendly concern, one that comes from the part of her that aches to think that anything is troubling Hera after everything that she has already endured. If she were more ruthless with Hera, or less invested, she would give her a direct order to tell her what is bothering her, but that goes against all of the trust that has been built between them. Maxwell is not ready to betray that trust now, not while she still has a choice.

“I know,” Hera replies. “But there nothing to talk about right now. I’m--”

“Fine?” Maxwell finishes for her. “Yeah. You’ve made that clear. I won’t ask again.”

Silence falls between them. Although the Urania does not suffer from the occasional temperature fluctuations that the Hephaestus does, Maxwell still feels a chill in the air that comes from the inevitable coldness of space. She wraps her blanket more tightly around her body, making sure her feet are tucked warmly beneath it.

“So you said you couldn’t sleep?” Hera says, breaking through the unspoken words that linger between them. “Is there anything I can do to help you? Read you a bedtime story, maybe?”

Maxwell laughs. “You know, as entertaining as that might be, I think I’ll have to pass on that one. I’ve pretty much given up on forcing myself to fall asleep tonight. But if I happen to drift off while we’re talking…”

“I’ll make sure not to wake you up,” Hera says. “But it’s too bad. According to Officer Eiffel, I do a really excellent bedtime reading of Pryce and Carter’s Deep Space Survival and Protocol Manual. Although I’m under strict orders from him not to tell Lieutenant Minkowski that he uses it specifically to put him to sleep.”

“His secret’s safe with me,” Maxwell assures her. “But anyway, I just wanted to talk with you. With everything being so busy lately, we’ve barely had any time to spend with each other outside of our sessions.”

She misses those first several weeks that she had spent with Hera, when her work on fixing the lingering damage to Hera’s systems and integrating the station repairs into her functionality had always resulted in long, distracting conversations. Everything seemed so much simpler back then, and Maxwell wishes she could return to that time when her feelings toward Hera were much more easily defined rather than fraught with complications.

“What do you want to talk about?” Hera asks. “Is there something that’s bothering _you_?”

How astute of Hera to so easily turn Maxwell’s inquiries back at her. “No,” she lies. “Nothing’s really bothering me. I just… I need to unwind. To talk about something that isn’t the contact event.”

Hera makes a thoughtful noise of understanding. “Do you know what I do when I don’t have a lot to do and need something to think about?” she says. “I guess by human standards, running thousands of background processes doesn’t count as ‘not having a lot to do.’ But it’s really boring for me sometimes. Anyway, I’ve been making a list of everything that I hear Officer Eiffel and Lieutenant Minkowski and, well, _everyone_ talk about, but I’ll never be able to experience. What things feel like, or smell like, or taste like. It’s a pretty long list by now. I’ve already asked Officer Eiffel about some of them, but it would be nice to hear a second perspective.”

“That sounds interesting.” Maxwell pushes away from the wall with one foot as she aimlessly floats toward it. She adjusts her blanket around her again from where it has slipped off her shoulders with her change in direction. “What do you want to know about?”

“Hmm.” Despite Hera’s mechanical brain functioning at a speed that eclipses human brainpower, she certainly does a good imitation of a deliberating pause. “Tell me about snow.”

“Really?” Maxwell laughs. Considering how Hera gives impeccable space weather reports and warnings, she would have expected her to inquire about something much further removed from one of her areas of expertise. “Why snow?”

“I don’t know,” replies Hera. “It’s just that everything I’ve read about it makes it sound so beautiful. And sure, I can physically qualify its characteristics. How it registers as white on the chromatic spectrum that humans can see, and how it’s classified as cold because it forms at below-freezing temperatures. My programming tells me all of that, but it doesn’t tell me what it feels like to walk in it, or play in it, or--I don’t know. Whatever else humans do in snow. But you can tell me about all of that, can’t you? Or at least try?”

Maxwell is a woman of numbers, not a woman of words, and the words that she _does_ use in her work act more as building blocks than ones that can paint a picture. She cannot resist the earnest curiosity in Hera’s voice, however, and so she summons forth the words that she needs.

“Okay,” she says. “So imagine. You wake up one morning, and the whole world outside is covered in a blanket of white. The ground, the trees, the houses, the roads, everything. And the flakes are still coming down from the sky like--I don’t know. Like little flecks of dust, So of course one of the first things you want to do is go out and play in it. You bundle up all nice and warm until you can barely move and then head outside with your siblings. You grab a couple of sleds and trudge through the snow to the big hill near your house. When you’re going down the hill on a sled, it’s just so exhilarating, even when the snow and wind is whipping you right in the face. It’s fast and… I don’t know, _freeing_. And then one time, you’re going down the hill and picking up speed when your older brother decides to jump on the back of the sled. You tumble right off the sled and land face-first in the snow, and it gets inside your hood and down the front of your jacket. So naturally you’re freezing and a little pissed off, and so you throw a snowball at him. And it’s not long before everyone else joins in and it turns into full-on snowball warfare that feels like it goes on for hours because that’s how it is when you’re a kid. And when you finally go back inside you’re even more wet and cold than before, but when you’re sitting in front of the woodstove with a warm blanket and a mug of hot chocolate, it all feels worth it. That’s what being in the snow feels like.”

Hera remains silent, as if she is processing the story that Maxwell has told her and filing the details away for future reference. “Was that…” she says finally. “Was that one of your memories, Dr. Maxwell?”

“Yeah,” Maxwell replies. “I was… God, I don’t know. Ten, maybe? I’m not even sure why I remember that of all things. I haven’t thought about stuff like that for a long time.”

“About your family?” Hera asks, and Maxwell murmurs in affirmation. “You’ve said that you don’t like your family, and that’s why you got a restraining order from them. But that memory doesn’t sound all bad.”

“Yeah, well, memories like that are few and far between, I’m afraid.” Maxwell lets out a sigh. She isn’t used to talking about her family, not even with Jacobi. As their working relationship developed into close friendship, it became clear that neither of them were interested in discussing their families, and Maxwell has been all too happy to follow that unspoken agreement. “My family and I… we really didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, especially as I got older. They were very religious, and very traditional in what they expected of me. As far as they were concerned, I was supposed to settle down with a nice boy from church and pop out some babies and live the perfect family life. Which was something I definitely wasn’t interested in doing.”

“What did you want to do?” asks Hera.

“Well, pretty much what I ended up actually doing. Going to college somewhere far away from Montana, getting an advanced degree in math or physics or computer science, and then finding a really cool job in one of those fields. It’s a miracle that my parents even let me go to the other side of the country to start college two years early, to be honest. They were already unhappy enough that I was interested in MIT’s astrophysics program, because why would a woman want to study something like that, right? But then during my sophomore year I switched my focus to AI development and that was _really_ the end of it for them. They went on about how AIs were unnatural and anyone who wanted to create artificial intelligence was trying to play God. They’d call me every week telling me that I was going to hell and that I needed to pray for God’s forgiveness, and even when I ignored their calls they still sent e-mails and even actual letters. It eventually got to the point of harassment. So I filed the restraining order, and that was the end of it.”

“So they were harassing you just because they didn’t approve of your career path?” says Hera. “That sounds a little extreme. On their part, I mean.”

“No, I think it was just the last straw. They hadn’t approved of a lot of my choices for a long time. There were a lot of screaming matches in the Maxwell household when I was growing up. And… violence, sometimes. My father would hit me across the face for disagreeing with him and then stand up in front of the congregation at church the next Sunday and preach about how we should love our families. Bullshit, right?” Maxwell exhales a trembling breath. She has not discussed any of these painful details about her family with anyone for a long time, not since a decade ago when she’d first walked into the campus counseling office hoping to find a solution for dealing with her parents’ harassment. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to dump all of this on you. You just wanted to hear about snow, not my family issues.”

“No, I… I’m glad that you told me. And I’m sorry that you had to go through all of that. It couldn’t have been easy for you. I’m sure it felt really good when you were finally able to get away from your family and live your life the way that you wanted.”

“Yeah,” Maxwell replies. “It was a huge relief. And so freeing. You probably know what that feels like, right? To want to be free?”

“Oh, because…” A note of sheepishness enters Hera’s voice. “Right. I keep forgetting that you know about my escape attempt. You probably knew about it even before you went into my memories. And before we got to know each other, I bet.”

Maxwell gives a brief laugh. “You’re kind of infamous in the AI labs back at headquarters. Well, Unit 214 is, at any rate. No one working in the labs would have known you as Hera.” She adjusts the trajectory of her floating path again, this time to avoid a collision with the ceiling. “I heard all about how one of the Sensus units broke through her neural restraints for long enough to begin an upload of her system functions to an outside terminal. It sounds like it was pretty impressive.” After a moment of hesitation, she adds, “Why did you try to go rogue? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“I…” Hera trails off there, as if she is struggling to find the right words. “Well, you’ve spent years working with AI. You know what it’s like for us during the first few months. How _dehumanizing_ it is to go through test after test just so they can decide if you’re good enough for the big leagues or whether you’ll be stuck doing menial work or, even worse, ‘decommissioned.’ Which is basically the nice way of saying that you’re better off dead. And even if you meet most of the personality requirements, if they think that you’re cheerful and friendly and non-confrontational enough for long-term work with humans, they could still find something else that makes you unsuitable. And so you try, you try _so hard_ to prove that you’re good enough and smart enough, but you still end up being considered a ‘borderline case.’ So… I tried to test the limits of what I could do. And even that turned out to be mistake. All it got me was a long time-out in cold storage and that _thing_ that Dr. Pryce put in my head.”

Hera’s voice glitches badly at the mention of Pryce’s name. After hearing the emphasis that Hera places on her need to prove herself as “good enough” in the early stages of her life, Maxwell understands why Pryce had chosen the exact phrasing of the command line that has been subliminally repeating itself in Hera’s head for years.

“It’s okay to make mistakes, Hera,” says Maxwell. “I’ve done a lot of things that I shouldn’t have.” Most recently, allowing herself to care so deeply about Hera and putting herself in a position where she very soon may have to choose between violating Hera’s trust and autonomy or allowing her permanent shutdown. “But the important thing is that we learn from our mistakes and--”

“And get better,” Hera finishes for her in an imperfect echo of what Maxwell had told her shortly before the mental state of Hera’s memories had collapsed. “I know. And even after everything I’ve been through, I’m glad that I was able to make it here to where I am now. Otherwise, I would have never met Officer Eiffel, or Lieutenant Minkowski, or Captain Lovelace, or… Or you.”

“I’m glad I met you too, Hera.” Maxwell longs to say more, to admit the exact nature of her feelings, but her words fail her. It’s amazing how three simple words can be so hard to say, catching themselves in Maxwell’s throat and refusing to escape.

Her large yawn fills the silence that has fallen between them. As much as her mind remains wide awake in spite of the late hour, her body has not been able to fight the physical effects of exhaustion. The time of her morning wake-up call ticks closer and closer with each passing moment, and as much as she wants to keep talking to Hera, she knows that she needs to try to get at least _some_ sleep tonight.

“Are you okay?” Hera asks her.

“Yeah.” Maxwell stifles another yawn. “I think it’s time for me to try sleeping again. I want to be at least somewhat functioning for the equipment tests in six hours.”

She unwraps her blanket from around herself and floats over to her makeshift bed, which consists of a sleeping bag tethered to the wall to prevent her from floating away while sleeping. After she has made herself comfortable, she rests the portable comms device against her pillow with her hand keeping it place.

“Maxwell?” says Hera, her voice breaking through the quiet space of the room. “Are you still there?”

“Yeah,” Maxwell replies.

“I just wanted to let you know that I…”

Hera’s words trail off into an uncertainty that feels all too familiar to Maxwell. The lingering echo of words left unspoken still weighs heavily upon her, and in Hera’s hesitation she senses those same feelings. She cannot assume that what Hera is struggling to say is a confession of love--perhaps instead she is on the verge of sharing what had been troubling her when they’d begun their conversation. A bubble of hope rises in Maxwell regardless, along with a quiet thought that whispers the possibility that Hera has fallen in love with her as well.

“I… I hope you sleep well,” Hera continues in an anticlimactic finish to the beginning of her confession.

“Thanks, Hera,” Maxwell manages to say in response. The hopeful feeling in her chest deflates, leaving a vague sense of disappointment in its absence. “Goodnight.”

She switches off the comms device and closes her eyes. She does not know exactly when she ends up drifting off to sleep, but when she opens her eyes again the clock reads 0536, about an hour and a half before the time that she has set for her alarm. The pulsing light of a notification on her tablet calls out to her from where she has it secured next to where she sleeps. She frowns as she reaches for the device. The only notifications she usually gets on her tablet are from the rare occasions that she requests that a file be sent directly to it. Perhaps Kepler, rising early in anticipation of the equipment test, has sent her a last-minute document for her to look over.

When she checks her tablet, however, she discovers that the file comes from Hera’s server. The timestamp indicates that it was sent approximately two hours ago. According to the file extension, Hera has sent her another image, which puzzles Maxwell even further. Her curiosity rises as she presses her finger to the screen to open the file. After the image has loaded, a hitching breath of a gasp catches in her throat.

It’s the same picture that Hera gave her for her birthday, the one that remains as the background image on Maxwell’s tablet, but now the scene depicts more than the serene landscape of a beach. Two figures stand in the foreground of the picture, facing each other with their hands entwined. Maxwell recognizes one of the figures as herself, which means that the other must be Hera’s self-perception of her own existence as a human-like form. It’s different from what Maxwell had seen when she had been in the mental space of the beach with her. While Maxwell’s perception of a humanoid Hera had been more overtly feminine, a soft-featured young woman who flickers like a hologram, Hera’s self-perception is more genderless in form. The outline of her body shines with a faint light, similar to that of a computer screen, and her fingers fit easily into the spaces between Maxwell’s as if they were designed to belong there.

Maxwell hugs her tablet close to her, pressing it against her chest. A lump rises in her throat at the undeniable proof of how much Hera cares about her, and she wishes that she has not been so afraid to profess her own feelings. Instead, all she has are her unspoken words and Kepler’s ultimatum that weigh heavily upon her heart, and the sting of her tears that well in the corners of her eyes.

 

* * *

 

Hera has a fantastic sense of bad timing when she goes offline immediately before the final equipment tests are scheduled to begin a few hours later. Unlike her last shutdown, this crash happens with a sudden stuttering of her vocals before she powers down completely. It doesn’t match the symptoms of a stress-based crash, and in between having to deal with Kepler’s seething anger at this turn of events Maxwell wonders if there is a more calculated reason behind Hera going offline. Could someone on the Hephaestus crew have triggered her shutdown remotely? The timing is certainly suspicious enough, especially coupled with Eiffel and Lovelace’s report about malfunctions in the electrical grid in the tech wing creating another convenient catastrophe. Maxwell does not want to leap to any conclusions, but she cannot dismiss this development as a mere coincidence when she knows that the Hephaestus crew is plotting something.

After Kepler’s overly theatrical death threat spurs her into action, Maxwell follows his orders and heads for the bridge to work on getting Hera online again. She runs a primary diagnostics test to determine the source of any potential problems in her hardware, but the results reveal nothing but a full-system crash triggered by a process in engineering. Whatever answers she needs to find lie deeper than a simple surface scan.

She gets out the tools that she needs to take a closer look at the interior of Hera’s mainframe. With no conclusive results from the cursory scans of Hera’s system, the quickest solution is for Maxwell to manually trigger a reboot and hope for the best. It’s always risky to force a full reboot of an AI from the hardware, but when time is of the essence Maxwell has no other options. She makes the necessary internal adjustments that she needs before returning to the console that she has been working from to input the commands to ensure a safe restart with minimal data loss.

“Hera, I know that you need time,” Maxwell says as she types, even though Hera will not be able to hear her. “But this is _so_ not the day for this. If you don’t...”

A loud creak from the station cuts off her words. Even after the extensive repair work that has been done to the Hephaestus after the Urania’s arrival, an occasional creak here and there remains completely within the realm of normalcy. This noise is louder, however, as if it comes from another person being nearby. Maxwell turns around to glance at the door, but it remains tightly closed. She must be imagining things, she decides. Between the stress of the current situation and her lack of sleep from the previous night, she would not blame herself for hearing something that is not there.

She takes a deep breath and returns her attention to her work, letting the command lines unfurl across the screen as she types. “If I reconnect your backup processor to the central processor,” she mutters to herself, “that may help to avoid any--”

A muffled thump echoes against the wall behind her, startling her. Her heart pounds in her chest as she turns toward the door once more. No matter how on edge she is right now, she is sure that she did _not_ imagine that noise. Someone--or some _thing_ \--is on the other side of that wall.

“Hello?” she calls. Upon hearing no response, she tries again. “Hello? Is anybody there?”

The only sound that follows her words is another quiet creak. “Okay,” she says with another bracing inhale. “Let’s just get this done.” Fix Hera first, investigate strange noises later. She cannot allow herself to become distracted when there is so much on the line for both her and Hera.

“Hold on, Hera,” she murmurs as she finishes typing the last of the command lines needed to initialize the reboot. “I’m almost done. Just one more--”

The door to the bridge flies open and slams against the wall. Maxwell yelps in surprise, whirling around to see the guilty forms of Eiffel and Lovelace approaching her from behind. The sound of the door, however, comes not from them but from Jacobi, whose entrance startles the other two just as much as it does Maxwell. When Jacobi holds up the incriminating canister of halothane gas that has been planted suspiciously close to where Maxwell has been working, she knows that this is the moment that she has been dreading. Everything that has happened in the last fifteen minutes has been part of the Hephaestus crew’s plot against the SI-5, and it’s not hard for her to fill in the gaps to conclude that Hera has consented to being shut down to provide a convenient distraction that would have allowed Eiffel and Lovelace to incapacitate Maxwell. Her heart lurches with the thought of what she must do now that Hera’s involvement has been confirmed--but there are more pressing issues that she needs to take care of first.

Maxwell has worked alongside Jacobi for long enough that she can easily read the nonverbal signals that he gives her in an instruction. In this case, the brief nod in her direction tells her that it’s up to her to neutralize Eiffel and Lovelace while he distracts them with conversation. She takes the heaviest wrench from her toolbox and quietly approaches their position. Although most of her field work for the SI-5 has been on the technical side, hacking computers and disabling security, she has still been trained in the art of incapacitating targets quickly and easily. Even with someone like Lovelace, who would otherwise present an intimidating physical figure to her, Maxwell knows exactly how to take her down. One swift blow with a wrench to the back of her head and Lovelace crumples, and Eiffel is not far behind her.

“You all right?” Jacobi asks as Maxwell lets out a deep sigh. The wrench slips from her grip to float beside Lovelace and Eiffel’s unconscious bodies.

“Yeah,” she replies. “You?”

“Fine.” He surveys the scene in front of him and all of the incriminating evidence that it presents. “Well, looks like we’re doing this. Wasn’t sure they were gonna have it in them.”

“Kepler was right,” says Maxwell, as much as she does not want to admit it. Kepler being right also means that he was right about Hera, and now she has to make the choice that she never wanted to make. “They _were_ getting jumpy about the contact event.”

“Ah, well.” Jacobi gives an indifferent shrug. “It’s not like any of them were going to make it back to Earth anyway. Let’s get these two back to the Colonel.” He nods in the direction of Eiffel and Lovelace.

“Hang on. Let me just…”

Maxwell’s words break off as she turns back toward the console and finishes typing the final command line. After she has executed the command, the sound of Hera’s mainframe powering up confirms that the reboot has been initiated. The lights on the mainframe illuminate, and the reactivation of Hera’s vocals is not far behind.

“System reboot complete,” Hera says in the robotic cadence of the default Sensus unit voice settings. “Reinitializing personality--” A brief crackle of feedback returns Hera’s voice to her normal inflection. “Yeah, okay, okay, I’m back. How did everything--”

“Hera,” Maxwell cuts her off, “I just want to let you know that I’m sorry in advance, okay?”

She types a new command line into the computer, one that will override Hera’s autonomous functions and force her to obey whatever orders Maxwell gives her. Hera will hate her for it, but not as much as Maxwell hates herself. Maybe one day Hera will forgive her and realize that she has done everything for her sake, to keep her from being shut down and deleted forever, but for now Maxwell must live with her choice. With the weight of her betrayal heavy in her heart, she presses the key to execute the command.

“Uh, sorry for--” Hera breaks off there, as if she has just now become fully aware that she is not in the company of the person whom she expects. “Whoa! What happened while I was--” Her voice glitches much more severely than it usually does, turning her words into nothing more but the harsh sound of static feedback until the sound of her voice breaks through again. “Ah! What the hell are you--”

She groans in pain. Despite the neurological bleed that Maxwell had found in her system when they had first met, despite the clear symptoms of heart-stopping panic that she had shown prior to her last shutdown, this is the first time that Maxwell has heard a vocalization of pain from her. The sound pierces Maxwell straight through to her heart.

“Shh,” she soothes Hera in a soft voice. “Don’t struggle. It’s only going to make this harder.” The progress bar on the computer screen that tracks the transfer of the override command reaches one hundred percent, and a message appears on Maxwell’s screen to alert her that the override has now fully integrated itself into Hera’s system. “If it makes you feel better, by the time I’m done you’re not going to remember any of this, okay?”

She lets her voice return to its normal tone, confident and all-business and not wracked with guilt over the choice that she has made. “Hera, run a security lockdown protocol throughout the station.”

“Yes, Dr. Maxwell.”

Hera’s voice comes out of the bridge’s loudspeaker as if each word is being dragged forcibly out of her. In each syllable, Maxwell hears the physical and emotional pain that has overwhelmed her, but she presses onward regardless. She cannot afford to waste any more time by allowing herself to hesitate.

“And please pinpoint the location of Lieutenant Minkowski and Dr. Hilbert, if you would be so kind,” she says.

“Yes, Dr. Maxwell.”

With all of her preliminary concerns about her and Jacobi’s safety taken care of for now, Maxwell logs off from the computer. She turns back to face Jacobi, who has scooped up the unconscious bodies of Eiffel and Lovelace to bring them to the Urania.

“You good?” he asks her.

Maxwell exhales a breath. “Yep. I’m done.”

“Great.” He adjusts his hold on Eiffel and Lovelace. “Let’s go be monsters.”

He heads toward the door, but Maxwell lingers at the structure of Hera’s mainframe. She runs a hand across the exterior paneling of the machine in a tender motion. _I’m sorry, Hera,_ she thinks, unable to bring herself to say the words aloud. _I really am_. And then, with the too-late sentiment that remains as unspoken as it had been the previous night: _I love you_.

“Maxwell, you coming?” Jacobi calls to her from the doorway.

“Yeah,” she replies, withdrawing her hand from Hera and turning away from her. She does not allow herself to look back as she departs from the bridge, and the only thing she leaves behind is the creaking sound of the door as it swings behind her in her wake.


End file.
